


Morty in Silent Hill

by DevilishDaddy



Series: Rick and Morty - SH-909 [1]
Category: Gravity Falls, Rick and Morty, Silent Hill
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Brutality, Character Death, Dark, Death, Demonic Possession, Easter Eggs, Graphic Description, Implied/Referenced Incest, M/M, Monster porn, Monsters, Multi, Multiple Crossovers, Multiple Deaths, Murder, Mutilation, Mystery, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Plot, Rape/Non-con Elements, Repetitive Cycles, Violence, You don’t have to know the fandoms to read and understand this!, in world game dynamics (save spots and multiple lives), vivid descriptions
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-03
Updated: 2018-06-17
Packaged: 2019-05-17 20:52:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 12,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14838962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DevilishDaddy/pseuds/DevilishDaddy
Summary: Morty ends up in Silent Hill after getting a letter from his grandfather, Rick, to meet him at their special spot, but the town isn't the same as it was in Morty's childhood. Now it's a ghost town, filled with dangers and mysteries around every corner! Can he keep his sanity in the cursed reality he's been thrust into? Will Rick be waiting for him at the end?Note: This is a crossover fic but you *do not* have to be familiar with the characters, plots, or content of any of the original media to read this fiction. It has nods and Easter eggs for fans, some in-character mannerisms, but I’m writing it as a stand alone horror piece. So, if you like monsters, drama, and dark mystery, please check it out!





	1. Introduction

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rosemary_madness](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosemary_madness/gifts).



> This story will be a multi-chapter fiction following Morty Smith (a.k.a.Sinner Morty), who takes the parody role of James Sunderland, in this crossover between Rick and Morty and one of my favorite survival game franchises, Silent Hill. 
> 
> It is part of the "Rick and Morty - SH-909" series. "Morty in Silent Hill" is the first collection of stories in the series, but there will also be a story called "Pyramid Head Rick, Demon of Silent Hill" that will focus on side events from the PH Rick character's perspective. Both are dark and gritty and follow the same timeline at their core, but I'm keeping them separated for those who might prefer following Morty's more traditional SH-inspired trail–––and to keep things from getting too confusing. 
> 
> Now, without further ado, please enjoy the story so far!
> 
>  _ **Dedication:**_ This story is in-part dedicated to my gore-buddy, rosemary_madness! It's also dedicated to all my friends who have shared their love and support towards my work and an interest in Silent Hill! If it weren't for all of you, I never would have gotten off my lazy butt and started this fic. - Thank you!

Sweat soaked the young man’s forehead and kept his loose, short brown hair clung to his skin. Morty Smith had no idea just how long he had been running, but it felt like hours. He stopped behind a flesh and iron wall and tried to catch his breath. He tasted the sharp, stinging twinge of bile rising up in his dry throat.

          He was trapped in a nightmare world, one as dark and all consuming as a black hole. That void pulled him deeper into the unknown and threatened to tear him apart atom from atom. The only comfort was Morty’s small flashlight. From it’s secure place in the young man’s breast pocket, a short range fan of light allowed him to see just far enough ahead that he didn’t usually bump into anything.

          The object, convenient as it was, had been more useful to Morty than even the gun he had found in the elementary school. The gun worked fine on the insects and smaller monsters, but it was useless against _the demon_. At least the light aided Morty in escape. It would have been impossible to flee in the darkness without it. In a maze like Silent Hill, especially the way it was now, even the walls and floor could swallow your soul if you weren’t careful.

_Ruaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhk!_

          A drawn out screech of weighted metal scraping against the rusted, iron floor sent Morty’s already racing heart into overdrive. He knew very well what the sound represented.

 _No-!_ Morty thought the words so he wouldn’t risk capture by screaming them. _How can he have found me already?! What’s with this guy?! W-what the hell did I ever do to_ **_him_ ** _??_

          The horrible metallic abrading paused.

          In his mind, Morty saw the wielder of the giant blade taking a step forward. He was certain the creature had made it to the end of the hall, and now the beast was turning the corner. That was one of the only times the sound of the dragging stopped. He knew for sure he was right, because—just a moment later—the sound came again, but louder than before.

_Oh god! He’s coming!_

          Morty looked around. He searched the oxidized metal walls around him for any sign of a door or opening he could escape through. He hadn’t been thinking clearly when he had run to the back of the hall, only that he had to escape the gang of mangle-faced doctors in the other corridor. However, in his haste, he’d bumped into an even worse threat: the pyramid headed man.

          During his first encounter with the demon, the boy had seen the monster tear another person in two. The demon had run the other person through the gut with his blade, grabbed their head in one mighty hand and one of their thighs with the other, and pulled! Morty had watched as those thick fingers dug deep, bruising grooves into the meaty section of leg. Then, just like that, the nearly eight-foot-tall beast had torn a human being apart.

          Morty had no doubt that he would meet the same fate if the demon captured him, and that’s why he ran like his life depended on it. Because it did!

          It was a simple matter to flee from the slow-moving demon and his heavy blade, but staying ahead of the thing was trickier matter. There was no way that the monster could always be just a few yards behind, and yet, no matter how far or fast Morty fled, that seemed to be the case. The demon was always just a short ways behind.

          Morty’s feet smacked the moist ground as he tried to outrun the creature anyway. The walls around him were slick and shiny with blood and—what Morty thought smelled like—well-water. The texture of the hospital walls made finding an actual door surprisingly complicated. Grated industrial iron with diamond extrusions made up the majority of the walls, but sections were replaced by leathery skin that appeared to be sewn into the design by thick surgical thread. Sometimes, there were evident iron doors that Morty could identify from a short distance, but other times there were just slits or _wounds_ in the wall that had to be sliced or pushed open before he could escape into the next room.

_RRRRUUUAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAK!_

          Morty dared a glance down the hall, back the way he had come, and his heart stopped. A long, pointed metal nose pushed around the corner. The deadly angles of the demon’s pyramid head came into view inch by inch. His massive, muscular body, almost unnervingly human but too tall and discolored to be mistaken for normal, pulled forward into view following the helmet. The beast’s right arm fell behind as he made it to the center of the intersection, then the intimidating male jerked his shoulder forward and his meaty arm dragged the enormous cutlery in place beside him. It was the threatening end of the enormous heavy-blade that made that terrible sound. Sparks flew out as the metal of the blade dragged across the metal of the floor.

          Morty’s mind faltered in logic and he turned to run. _Get away from him!_ His mind screamed the words over and over. _I have to get away from him! He’ll kill me! He’ll kill me!_

          Unfortunately, Morty had no time to look at the map of the hospital he had found along his journey. Even if he had, this nightmare world—that arrived after the sound of the bomb siren—was unpredictable. Just because a door or building was somewhere in the foggy, normal realm–and how bizarre that such a place seemed normal now–that didn’t mean the same landmark or pathway would exist in this version of Silent Hill.

 _SMACK_!

          “Pugh!” Morty hit the back wall while running full speed. He stumbled back and cleared his head by stilling himself. Then, “No, no, no, no, no!”

          Morty felt along the wall, feeling for any cracks or bevels or sutures that might suggest an escape route. There were none. _No! It’s a dead end!!!_

          Morty turned on his heels and readied to sprint, but it was too late. The demon was there, standing a short distance away. Morty could smell his deeply masculine musk and taste the metallic twinge of his rotting iron head on the back of his tongue.

_H-h-how?! How could he have gotten behind me so quickly?!”_

          Morty pressed himself back against the wall. His fingernails ached as they dug into the surface.

          “Please,” Morty whimpered. Thick streams of tears rolled down his cheeks in rivers. “Don’t….” _Don't kill me_ , is what his mind pleaded, but his tongue felt swollen and his terror left him frozen in place.

          With one swift movement, the monster hulled back his right arm and used his horrific strength to throw his blade out. It sliced through everything in its path, including the tough material of the wall. It became caught in its travels, locked in place, jutting out of the center of said barrier.

          Morty’s eyes stared wide and unblinking at the man with the geometric face. Despite himself, the human’s lips started to pull up in a weak smile. His flesh became a pale pallet of white. Splotches of darker reds and purples, like bruising, appeared around his eyes and his various small wounds. His lips followed suit, vibrant blue undertones spread as they parted softly. Suddenly, a pool of deep red rushed out from between his teeth and seeped down his chin, draining out like thick streams of paint from a sponge filled past capacity.

          The garnet fluid colored his shirt. Then the blood fell on the flat side of the nightmare’s blade. Morty coughed once, a terribly painful endeavor, and the blood splattered all along the intrusive thing, up to its handle and the huge hand gripping it.

          The Demon pulled his arm back and Morty shook violently as the weapon ran backwards through his center. He was still conscious when the blade finally released its sticky hold on his body, and he felt a strange and frightful loss of balance as his severed lower half fell to the ground beneath him. He heard a disgusting _THUNK_ and the steamy spill of his own entrails as they poured from his lower abdomen.

          Morty saw the world blackening around the edges of his vision, but death was surprisingly too slow. He was too aware that he had been cut in half and that his upper body was upright only until the sword was pulled completely free from the wall. For just a second, he feared he could not die in this hell, and that he would be aware of his mutilation for the rest of time. However, just then, as he felt the end of the blade slipping free, his organs trapped by its shape begin to fall down from their proper place inside. Morty felt the relief of the sweet, welcomed embrace of total darkness. There was, it seemed, an end to his nightmare after all.


	2. No Saved File Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morty starts his adventure anew. 
> 
> Rated: General - Just a set up chapter.

“Agh!” Morty threw himself into a sitting position. His head pounded and his heart raced. He looked around, his arms held up defensively as he blocked for a nonexistent incoming attack. 

          “What?” His rapid panting was slowly replaced by steadying breaths. He swallowed the lump in his throat and lowered his hands to the leather padding of his steering wheel. “What the hell was that?”

          A dream, already disappearing into the fog, haunted Morty a moment longer as he gathered his thoughts. He ran his fingers through his short, brown, wavy strands of hair with both hands. There was a modest amount of sweat built up on his scalp, and at the back of his neck, but he was already coming down from the nightmare's high.

          He didn’t remember the details of the dream anymore anyway.

          Morty left the interior of his inherited minivan and stepped into the crisp autumn afternoon. He took in a deep breath and held the cool mountain air in his lungs. The bitter taste of chemical soured the breeze as it passed over the back of his tongue. He didn’t remember Silent Hill having such a sharp flavor the last time he had visited. Almost coppery?

          “Let’s see,” Morty said aloud. He had that odd habit of talking to himself in the way some people did to kill the silence. His fingers searched the pockets of his Levi’s and came out short. They checked front and back before Morty remembered where he had put it. From a pocket of his pale-olive canvas jacket, Morty pulled a slightly crumpled piece of folded paper. 

          It was a note, a note he had received from his grandfather recently.

 

_           Morty, _

_                     I need to see you again. We need to talk.  _

_                     Meet me in Silent Hill, at our  _ **_special_ ** _ place. _

_                     I’ll be waiting. _

_           Rick _

 

          Morty had found that letter on his dresser a 34-hour-drive ago. He hadn’t thought about his next move. He dressed and hopped into his vehicle without taking much more than his wallet and the letter. He had started the long drive from his apartment on the East Coast to the quiet mountain town of Silent Hill in a trance that trapped him the whole ride. He barely remembered stopping off for gas, and he didn’t  remember parking at all. 

_           Going that long _ , he thought.  _ Maybe I finished the drive in my sleep. _

          It wouldn’t have been the first time he had done something stupid like that, so he brushed it off.

Morty’s eyes scanned the paper several more times. “Our special place…?” The letter was folded and placed back into his jacket’s right pocket. Morty walked over to the guardrail keeping his car from be tempted by the steep drop on the other side. 

Morty’s bare fingers gripped the icy metal edge of the guardrail. He leaned on it slightly, not daring his entire weight, and felt a frosty wind blow up from Toluca Lake from far below. He closed his eyes and tried to recall the details of his last vacation with Rick to the town. 

 

_           “You don’t look half bad, for a monkey,” Rick said. The older man had been the one who looked stunning, sporting that tuxedo like he was a an elderly James Bond. _

_           “Oh, shut up, Rick!” Morty had been flattered. He could feel the color burning his cheeks even now, years later. “Are we going or what?”  _

_           “Hold on.” Rick had come over to his grandson. Morty remembered his heart thrumming as Rick leaned down over him, gripping his collar.  _

_           “Your bow tie isn’t tied right.”  _

_           It was his fourteenth birthday. They were going to a party, right? Had they made it?  _

 

          Morty’s head started to ache, and the memory was lost to the pulsing pain. He didn’t worry about it. He had been suffering from headaches since he found that letter. He just closed his eyes and gritted his teeth until the feeling calmed. Then, he opened his eyes and let a small trail of tears leak from his left eye. He wiped it away, on the back of his sleeve, and sniffled. He hadn’t meant to get so emotional, so he partially blamed the tears on the cold.

          “Rick?” He pulled his jacket’s fluffy collar tighter around his neck, defensively against the wind. “Are you really there, Rick?”

_           You can’t be, can you?  _ Morty stared out in the direction he thought the Lakeview Hotel rested, somewhere across Toluca Lake’s vast girth, off to the far left. It was impossible to see through the crazy-thick fog that hid everything from a few yards away onward, but he was fairly sure he was almost right.  _ How can you be there? How, Rick? _

          It didn’t matter how, he guessed. Morty was already there, standing at the South-East entrance road to South Silent Hill, so he’d come to far to just go back now. A road cutting through Saratoga Valleyhe got him as far as a fork in the road. He had used to travel the path with Rick, and driving down the road might have been nostalgic, if he remembered it at all. That road had taken him up next to the Toluca Graveyard, on the southern coast of the massive lake, but it appeared that Morty would have to travel the rest of the way into town on foot. 

          He had some notion that he’d come this way because another road was blocked off, like he’d come into an obstacle or sign telling him he couldn’t travel on. For whatever reason, perhaps it was just his nerves, Morty was fine with taking the back way into town. It would give him time to think more.

          Morty guessed it would take him a few hours to get to the docks in South Silent Hill, unless he could catch a ride from one of the locals, so he decided he should get started.

          The young man left his minivan alone in the empty parking lot and started off along the pedestrian trail leading down the side of the cliff. 

          He had no idea how Rick had sent the note, but the handwriting was unmistakable and the letterhead bore the Lakeview Hotel’s logo. Somehow, Rick was there, waiting for him at the hotel. Waiting to talk to him.

          Morty wondered what his grandfather’s ghost might have to say after three long years.


	3. Toluca Graveyard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morty meets a stranger in the graveyard. The meeting leaves him a little more than confused.

As Morty ventured up the steep flight of stone steps towards the iron gate above, he paused momentarily, almost certain he had heard something rushing along the brush to his left. His footsteps quieted and he stood very still, listening for the rustle of leaves again, but nothing came. 

          “H-hello?” His voice cracked as he called out. He regretted doing so immediately because he recognized how cliche the action was, and how dangerous calling out to the unknown might be. If it were just a passing stranger he might have just invited them to an unwanted conversation, and what if it were an animal of some sort? A docile wanderer might turn vicious at the sound of human speech. He hated when people did that sort of thing in movies, but he had done it anyway. 

          At least it didn’t seem to put him into any danger this time. It had likely just been the strong winds kicking the bushes.

_           Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr— _

          Morty’s blood ran cold at the growling suddenly audible from the foliage to his left. It sounded like it was coming from something a few yards away and from up the side of the hill. That put unnerving thoughts of a wild dog leaping from its perch with maw gaped wide,  plummeting down with deadly intentions onto the human’s face.

          The young man’s eyes shifted this way and that, searching for the visual source of the scary sound. He didn’t  _ see  _ anything. He could just hear the deep, guttural noise. 

          “Oh, geez,” Smith whined. He decided getting to the gate ahead might offer some protection. Putting some iron rods between him and whatever was out there with him would be some comfort at least.

          Morty rushed–in something more akin to a power walk than a jog–to the top of the hill. He heard other growling voices meet the first and couldn’t help the image of a pack of mean-looking wolves that kept flashing in his mind. Still, nothing was seen, even in his parithreals. That didn’t keep his heart from leaping into his throat and pulsating hard enough that Morty lost his ability to easily breathe.

_           I made it!  _ Morty thought eagerly. 

          He threw open the wrought iron gate and practically jumped over its threshold. He turned in a whip and slammed the gate closed behind him, panting and sweating as though he had just run half a mile from a truly dangerous foe. However, when he looked through the dark bars of the barricade he saw that there was nothing standing or running up towards him on the other side. 

          He was safe. He was alone. Even the growling had ceased. 

          “Ohh, man.” Morty ran his fingers through his curly locks. He pushed the bangs back and let the sweat on his forehead dry in the cold fall air. “Get it together, Morty. Come on.”

          He was in Silent Hill to chase after a ghost, but he wasn’t about to let himself start interacting with paranoia-induced apparitions. 

 

          The gate, though Morty had only subconsciously taken note of it, had words carved into the upper metalwork that warned him of his location. He didn’t read the words “Toluca Cemetery”, however, so he gasped when he found himself face-to-face with a graveyard spanning out acres before him. 

          There were gravestones of all shapes and sizes. A few mausoleums stood near the center of the hilly fields. To the far left, so far back that Morty couldn't make out any details finer than the general shape and count of the windows or the iron crucifix standing on top of the center tower, there was a small mansion Morty assumed might be a residential church of some kind. The place seemed grayer, colder somehow than the path he’d only just come from, and there was a distinctly wet, earthy smell to the place. 

          “I think I can cut through here and get to the main road,” Morty told himself. He was working off an old and incomplete map in his mind. When he was a boy, though he supposed that wasn’t all that long ago, Morty had spent over an hour trying to memorize the map Rick had scribbled all over in case they had become separated. Morty had a way of getting lost and if that happened, knowing the rough-abouts of where things were helped. “Yeah!” The young man grinned. “I- I’m already heading west, and the south-west entrance should take me out onto 73!” 

          73 was the country road that turned into Nathan Avenue. Nathan Ave. ran all the way through South Silent Hill. If the layout was still the same, then Morty could just stay on that road to get to the ferry dock without too much trouble. It was a solid game plan, so with that in mind he started towards the south-west entrance to the cemetery.

          The ground was surprising soft underfoot. He noticed that, as he walked, his feet sunk about a centimeter down. The grass was kept but not recently cut. He was thankful for his hiking boots and long jeans, or else the moist blades might have scratched his ankles and made him itchy in that way only grass could. There weren’t many disruptions as he ventured. A rock or stray twig here or there, but the cemetery was quiet, almost peaceful–that was, if he had been the kind of person to find graveyards peaceful. There was quiet there, but an underline of disquiet had kept him from visiting such places very often. 

          He had never understood the real value of leaving the dead to rot, all alone in their own personal human-sized shoeboxes. Wasn’t it just like storing your lost ones in a public storage unit? Most people paid a lot to have their lost loved ones violated, desecrated, and stored six feet underground. It seemed impersonal to Morty. Especially in a country without any strong religious ties to the cemeteries themselves. At least in some cultures, there was at least a day out of the year where a place like a graveyard turned into a place of worship or festival. 

          He thought about those arbitrary things as he passed gravestone after gravestone. He found himself wondering when the last time was anyone had visited the grounds at all. He noticed the absence of flowers on most of the graves, and for some reason that realization broke his heart a little. 

          Morty’s idle thoughts broke and he paused and listened. Something like the moaning of the dead had caught his attention and chilled him to the bone. His ears strained to focus on the direction of the sound until he thought it was surely coming from up ahead, behind one of the smaller mausoleums. He hadn’t realized he had been holding his breath until his chest started to ache. He let the old air out slowly and started towards the sound.

          As he grew closer to the smooth, cement building, Morty realized the sound was not the distressed moans of the dead struggling to free itself from the cold earth, but another man’s woeful cries. 

          “Not again,” the voice pleaded. Morty thought the unseen male must be around his own age by the tone. He rounded the corner slowly as he listened to the voice repeat itself, growing angrier with every pass. “Not again. Not again, not again!” 

          “Hello?” Morty wondered immediately if he had made a mistake in offering his time to the stranger, but what Morty saw was not a lunatic but a frightened looking young man. The boy, he couldn’t be older than nineteen or twenty, was lying on the hard slab step of the crypt with his hands balled into fists, slamming against the door in an unfocused kind of way. He just seemed angry, scared even. Morty couldn’t help but want to at least try to help this guy out, if he could.

          “What?” The other male turned his face up towards Morty. His eyes were bloodshot and puffy from crying, but the tears seemed to stop the moment they enlarged at the sight of the other human presence. “Who- who are you?”

          “I’m Morty. Smith.” Morty held out his hand on impulse, offering to let the other man shake it despite the circumstance. To his surprise, the other male took it and yanked himself up using Morty’s body as a counter weight. Morty thought it was an impressive, possibly drug or alcohol induced bounce back, but then he felt a knife at his throat and jumped back with a yell. “Hey! Eh-what the hell, man?!”

          The stranger pulled his knife back as though he was ready to try gutting his opponent, but despite his violent pose and motion his eyes looked terrified and unsure. Morty thought perhaps the guy  _ was _ on some kind of narcotic.

          “Are- are you…?” The boy with the knife started to speak, his voice between a powerful demand and a shaking sound Morty had never heard in another human’s tone before. He sounded utterly terrified. At least, that’s how it seemed to Morty. “Are you one of them?” 

          “One of who?” Morty foolishly parroted and regretted it.

          “Them!” the other man screamed. “Them!”

          Morty took a small step back, his hands raised defensively. “Okay. No. Look, see? I’m no one. I’m just a guy cutting through.” He wished he hadn’t used the term cutting. “I’m here on vacation. To meet some family over in Silent Hill. I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

          The boy in the white and blue baseball cap looked Morty up and down. Morty tried not to take his eyes off of the knife, but he felt like he had to keep direct contact with those strung-out eyes to avoid getting stabbed.

          “I haven’t seen anyone else,” the stranger said. “No one  _ normal _ . And-and those monsters!” 

          Morty was certain now the poor kid was coming off something nasty. “Okay. Look at me, okay? I’m not a monster. I promise. Do I look like a monster?” It occurred to Morty too late that if the boy was on drugs that he might very well look like a monster to the other man, but thankfully his words seemed to have a relaxing effect on him instead. “I’m a high-school senior. My name is Morty Smith. I’m from California.” He didn’t know if he was handling the situation right at all, but he thought he had seen cop shows were the good guy talked crazy people down by making them think about strings of information rather than letting their paranoid minds wander on their own. “What’s your name?”

          The other boy licked his lips and his eyes shifted away from Morty. He was searching around the landscape now, as though he thought something was coming for him. “You’re human?” he asked, almost sounding calm. He checked Morty over one more time and finally let his posture ease. “I-oh god. I-I’m really-!” 

          He looked down at the knife in his hand, a look of a different kind of fear and disgust clear on his face. He let out a disturbed little sound with a gasp and threw the knife away, tossing it to the side like he couldn’t get away from it quickly enough. Then, he looked back up at Morty with an expression that said it all before he even had to. 

          “I’m so sorry. I-I’m not crazy. I swear!” He paused, swallowing the lump in his throat as he visually realized how crazy that sounded. He took several steps back and bumped into the door of the crypt. He let out a startled sound and turned to face it like it was one of the monsters he had mentioned before. He breathed a shaky sigh of relief and turned back towards Morty. 

          “What am I doing here?”

          Morty couldn’t believe it. This guy suddenly looked like he was completely lost. There were no more signs of tears in his eyes and it was like he had forgotten everything that had just transpired. He looked distracted, but otherwise totally calm. 

          “And who are you?”

          Crazy. The real kind of crazy.

          “Morty,” Morty said hesitantly. 

          “Oh. Hi!” The other male reached out his hand for a friendly “how do you do” handshake. Morty didn’t want to take it, but he didn’t want to risk not taking it either. Their hands cupped and gripped one another and Morty felt his stomach flip. However, nothing sinister transpired. “I’m Dipper! It’s nice to meet you, Morty.”

          “Thanks,” Morty said, pulling his hand slowly back to safety. “Good to meet you too.”

          “So, you live locally?”

          What was this guy’s deal? Morty couldn’t smell anything off about him, even so close. His complexion looked vibrant and healthy again too. It was a complete 180. 

          “Uh,” Morty muttered. “No. Just passing through.”

          “Riiiii—ght.” Dipper nodded, pulling on his blue tracker vest and adjusting it over his red long-sleeved shirt. “Well, I’m looking for my sister, Mabel. You haven’t happened to have seen her anywhere, have you?”

          Morty’s heart was pounding in his chest. He was starting to wonder if he’d puke or not for how seasick he suddenly felt. The stranger’s mood swings–“Dipper’s” mood swings, he reminded himself–had left Morty feeling a bit unstable. 

          “I-uhh,” Morty started. He shook his head a little. “Sorry. I don’t think so.”

          “You sure?” Dipper sounded disappointed, but Morty couldn’t tell if the disappointment sounded threatening or not. “I mean, you’d know her if you saw her. We’re twins, but she’s the pretty one. Haha!” Dipper laughed but the laugh made it clear that he felt self-conscious about his own joke. The sound petered off and he rubbed the back of his neck with his hand that no longer held the kitchen knife. “Yeah. I’m sure she’s around here somewhere. It’s okay. Thanks for your help anyway.”

          Just like that, Dipper turned to leave, saying “Thanks again!” as he trotted off towards the mini-mansion in the distance. He didn’t look back or wait for Morty to say anything else. And just like that, he was gone.

          “That-“ Morty blinked a few times and looked back at the mausoleum and then out over the field of tombstones. “That was weird.”

          It was okay, he decided. As long as he understood how weird that encounter was, he felt like he could move forward without thinking that somehow he was the crazy one.

          Morty shook his shoulders to loosen his tense muscles and tried not to think about how close he might have really been to death. His grandfather had a saying: “Don’t think about it.”

          Just before he took off for the south-east gate, the dull glint of a shining blade caught his attention.

_           The knife _ , Morty thought. He had two options then: take it or leave it. Leaving it might mean that Dipper or someone else might come there and find it. Anyone could, and that idea unsettled Morty.  _ I guess I shouldn’t just leave it here. _

          Morty bent down and picked the kitchen utensil up. He turned it over in his hand. There was something that looked like a paint smear–he convinced himself it was just a paint smear–on the handle, but the knife was otherwise spotless and seemed quite sturdy. 

_           I don’t think this knife would break very easily.  _ It was a bit of an odd thought, but it comforted Morty a little. 

          Morty mindlessly slipped the knife into the pocket of his jacket. He didn’t think about how effortless the motion was, or how the pointy object seemed to fit perfectly. Instead of worrying about such things, Morty started off again on his quest.

          This time, there were no interruptions between where he had been and the exit. He reached the large entrance and was relieved to find the gate unlocked despite the heavy chain that had been haphazardly wrapped around the center rungs. The brunet loosened the chains and watched them fall to the ground with a loud thud and a round of metal rattling. Then he unlatched the horizontal lock and pried the gate open. 

          A loud, eerie screech echoed as the two wrought iron doors swung outward on their aged hinges. Beyond the fresh opening, Morty saw what he had hoped to see. A paved road leading East disappeared into the fog, and visible by the road’s edge sat an official county marker. The sign read, “CH 73”. Beneath those symbols read, “SPD LMT 50”.

          Morty grinned. Silent Hill was only about an hour’s walk away!


	4. CH 73

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morty makes it out onto Country Highway 73 at last, but on his way to South Silent Hill, things go horribly wrong.

Morty had been expecting there to be little to no traffic on the country highway, but what he hadn’t expected was the fog. 

          The fog that seemed to thicken the closer he came to his destination, the closer he came to Silent Hill, was unusual to say the least. It sat heavy along Morty’s path, and it mostly looked like normal, albeit very heavy, fog. However, it didn’t  _ feel _ right. It didn’t feel quite like fog was supposed to feel. It smelled faintly of burned firewood instead of that chilled rain water on a stump scent that Morty had become accustomed to associating with the phenomenon. Also, though the wind was chilly, the fog itself almost seemed warm, more like one would expect from smoke. Then, there was the snow. Every so often Morty was sure he caught a glimpse of a thick snowflake fluttering to the ground. 

          Nothing about the weather made much sense. It was too early in the year and too warm for snow, and it was simultaneously too early and late in the day for this kind of fog. It puzzled Morty, but in that way that kept his worry in the back of his mind. It just didn’t seem all that important in the grand scheme of things.

          Morty segmented his venture into jogging sprints and steady-paced walking. Every few yards he’d switch from one to the other. This helps speed things along without tiring him out completely. He didn’t think much about it, though he was very fortunate he was in good shape and had high endurance from long distance running. 

          He had actually started jogging around his house when his grandfather had left the family. Even though Morty had loved his grandfather dearly, he found it impossible to think about his last days clearly. He just remembered going out for runs, and that had helped. 

          Some kind of mechanical noise in the distance caught Morty’s attention. It was coming from further up the road and was still faint at that distance, but Morty thought it might be another person with a car or something. If it was, he might be able to hitch a ride into town. That’d be good luck!

          Morty ran through the fog until his eyes caught sight of a strange structure. He slowed his pace, now only a short way from whatever was making that terrible sound. He didn’t think it was a standard motorist and their vehicle anymore though, mostly because the road was blocked off. The divider was even more dramatic than the one that had made him park his car and walk through the cemetery. 

          A chain link fence rose at least twelve feet high and blocked a path from as far as Morty could see in either direction. There were dozens of stretched black tarps pulled over the fence’s body and fashioned to it with bungee cords and metal hooks. These blocked out Morty’s ability to see beyond the fencing, almost completely. 

          “What the heck is all this for?” Morty wondered aloud. 

          There was a large, broken, wooden sign sitting up against the left side of a pedestrian entrance. It was red with white letters printed on it, some of which seemed worn away by weather. It read, “Under Restriction of County Law, Only Authorized Perso—— -eyond this point!” There was a toxicity and hazard symbol next to the order. Then, as Morty looked down at the ground next to the sign, he noticed what looked like a chunk missing out of the road. What was most bizarre was the shape of the hole. Rather than like someone dug it up or it eroded into a pothole, this wound in the infrastructure appeared to have been made by some sort of chemical, possibly an acid. The edges of the small crater appeared melted, the walls were slick and glossy and dropped down in layers like the melted sides of a candle. 

          All together, this did not make Morty feel any better. He swallowed thickly and looked at the simple break in the fence. There was no way around it, and this appeared to be the only way he could even try getting in to Silent Hill. But there was a buzzing in the back of his skull that warned him away from the dangerous decision of going forward. 

          “What should I do?”

          A strong, chilling wind blew just then that made Morty duck his head into the fluff of his collar and bury his hands into his pockets. He shivered and thought he would just have to turn back. Then his fingertips touched a piece of folded paper, the letter from Rick, and Morty pulled it out to look at it.

          Morty had loved Rick more than anyone, and if there was even a chance that Rick was waiting for him in Silent Hill–no matter how impossible that seemed–then he had to try.

          “Maybe these signs are old and they just closed down this road,” he told himself. “There’s probably nothing to worry about, and if I run into a cop or something, I-I can just tell them I panicked or something. I-I-I didn’t see the sign and I needed to get in.”

          Morty paused. It had been a while since he had last stuttered so much. He had stuttered all the time growing up. His father used to say it was because he was stupid. Well, he used the words “slower than other kids his age”, but he meant stupid. Morty had started stuttering less after Rick had died too, but now that he was on the verge of a possibly really dumb decision, Morty figured it was natural that some of his old habits might resurface. After all, stress could do that to a person.

          Morty took in a deep breath and walked between the barrier’s frame. He wasn’t surprised to see another tall fence with view-blocking tarps made up the back wall of the little pathway. It was wide enough, Morty thought, that two medics pushing gurneys could push past each other. 

_           What the hell? _ he inwardly scolded himself. _ Don’t think about it like that.  _

          As Morty traveled down the hall between the tall walls, he noticed several things. A rusty smell, almost coppery, became stronger as he ventured deeper into the simple maze. Also, the walls changed material as he went, as though whoever had put them up had run out of nice, clean tarps and chain linked fences. Wooden barricades and welded or tied together metal sheets took place of the previous structure. They were pushed together to make sure there were no great openings between the seams that someone might be able to squeeze through. 

          After Morty had been moving along for a while and had turned a few corners, he noticed that up ahead there was one of those full-shelter bridges that reminded him of a barn. He vaguely remembered there being one of those structures on the way into town, but he had forgotten about it until just then. 

          Then there was the sound. The loud metal cranking and whirring of a pissed off engine grew louder and louder. In the deserted space, the sound boosted Morty’s anxiety to an eleven. It had almost been enough on its own to make him want to turn back, but he didn’t. He held true to his task and pushed forward. 

          The sound was intensified when Morty finally made his way into the barn bridge. The hollow wooden container trapped the noise and it reverberated off the walls. Whatever was responsible for the racket was close. Probably just outside the other end of the bridge. Still, being trapped with the resounding rumble made Morty feel a touch nauseous and very nervous. The kind of horror anyone could feel when being alone in their own apartment or house could suddenly became intimidating. 

          Morty’s pace quickened in hopes of freeing him from the dark, creepy building. As he ran, his foot splashed in a sticky puddle that made him stop abruptly. He turned back to look at what he had just stepped in. The thick puddle of red liquid sent a shockwave through the man’s body. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck and arms stand on end. The fluid was dark, almost black around the edges, but the break in the surface his shoe had created looked lighter, and what appeared to be a bloody trail of shoe prints flowed Morty to where he now stood.

          “Th-there’s no-no way,” he mumbled. His mind raced for other explanations, but he couldn’t get the idea that he had just splashed in a pool of human blood out of his mind. Why human? Did it matter? It was his suspicion, and he became more paranoid by the second. He couldn’t help himself. 

          His mind traveled back to the stranger in the cemetery. Dipper, hadn’t it been? He had been off his rocker, and he had tried to stab Morty. Could he have hurt someone else first?

          Morty suddenly remembered the knife in his pocket. He swallowed back a lump in his throat and reached in to safely pull the utensil out. He held it loosely, turning it over in his hands for a moment, studying it. The so-called paint smear caught his attention again and Morty screamed. He threw the knife across the barn, no matter how stupid that felt. He looked at his hands, half expecting streaks of blood to be soiling his palms, but they were clean. 

          He could feel himself starting to hyperventilate. Morty grabbed his own hand and squeezed the center of his palm until he could think clearly again. He pushed the worries of murder and mayhem down and tried to think rationally. Logically. 

          “It’s probably just paint,” he told himself. 

          His eyes shifted around. Sure enough, even the barn bridge’s insides were painted in that dark red color.  _ So that made sense! It could totally be paint. No reasonable person would assume it wasn’t, right? _

          “Right.”

          Morty thought briefly to pick up the discarded weapon, but the idea of touching the paint smeared handle made him too uncomfortable to even consider it. He turned away from the puddle that wasn’t made of human blood and continued moving forward. 

          He was almost out of the barn when he realized what had been making that terrible mechanical noise. It was a car! But the vehicle was driverless and abandoned, with all four doors opened wide and the hood popped to reveal the engine. Even from where he was sitting, Morty could see that there was some sort of pipe sticking up out from the engine. It was vibrating, obviously clanking around between two sections of parts inside the vehicle’s frame. 

          “How did that happen?” Morty couldn’t imagine why anyone would just leave their car in such a state, much less turned on. “Weird.”

_           Gwuuuuaaaaaaaaghp _ !

          Morty jumped at the strange sound that came from his left. He turned and felt his skin pull tight as he gasped in horror at the fright stumbling towards him. The person-or creature-or thing- that was walking towards him appeared almost human in silhouette. It had long, thin human legs and an acceptably proportioned torso. However, from its hairless head to its toes, whatever it was appeared to be tightly vacuum sealed in a slippery-looking, fleshy casing. It’s arms, if it had any arms, were pulled in around itself and hidden inside the burned-brown and black skin suit. It had no visible facial features except for a long slit like a mouth cut halfway through the head, laying horizontally and separating the lower and upper jaw. A thick, bright yellow-green drool oozed out from between the slit, and as it walked forward–it’s legs jerking at the hip with knees buckled inward and stiff–splashes of the drool flung away from its flat lips and smacked the pavement below. A loud hiss started up each time this happened, warning of what might happen if any of the mess touched more delicate material.

          The sight alone was enough to make Morty’s stomach lurch. The smell launched a wad of acid into the back of his throat that held there and made it hard not to choke. 

          Morty was reminded of how sporadic Dipper had seemed, how he had been terrified by the sight of another person, and how he had accused Morty of being something other than human. For the first time in recent memory, Morty questioned his own judgment of reality. Were monsters real? Was he looking at one throwing its heavy torso side to side as it tousled towards him? Then what about the red puddle on the bridge? Had that been blood after all?

_           I shouldn’t have tossed that knife! _

          The drooling monster continued forward. It came from around the corner of the barn’s doorways and made Morty inch back to keep a distance from it. Despite the horror of the thing, the young man found it extremely hard to move at all. His feet felt heavy like lead and he couldn’t take his eyes of the awkward pattern of its approach.

          Then the slit along the lower half of its face began to open. There was a very audible display of cracking and sticky peeling as the monster’s mouth parted. The putrid fluid that had been peeking out created a web between the upper and lower jaws that’s strings snapped when the mouth reached its full girth. 

          Morty covered his mouth and nose with one cupped palm. A violent blast of sulfuric stink mixed with the reek of rotten meat filled the bridge and made the boy wretch. He swallowed back the bile and stared in horror at the leach-like structure of the monster’s mouth.

          Rows and rows of tiny teeth filled the circular cavern. There was a long, sharp tongue that reached out from the depths of the creature’s throat like a tendril. A gargled screech wrang out from within its pulsing chest and a waterfall of the sloppy yellow-green gunk oozed from the gaping hole and spilled down the front of the creature. 

          Large globs of the saliva poured onto the ground beneath the monster and Morty realized how the hole by the sign had been formed. The drool was dangerously acidic and started melting the wood flooring of the barn bridge as soon as it landed. It burned away the flooring with a loud hiss and the residue dropped down to the river below. 

          “Just-just stay away from me,” Morty warned. “I-I-I-“ He swallowed thickly and wet his lips nervously. “I have a weapon.” 

          The thing either couldn’t understand Morty, didn’t believe him, or didn’t care. Morty reached into his pocket, instantly shaming himself. He had  _ just  _ been thinking about how he had discarded the knife and there he was rooting around for it.

          His eyes shifted to the sides, but he couldn’t see the knife in his peripherals. He didn’t dare turn his head from the oncoming monster’s direction yet, though. He worried his inner lip and tried to imagine just where the knife had landed. He tried to poorly calculate if he could get to the knife, and then wondered if the knife would even do him any good.

          No time for idle thought. The monster suddenly shook its head violently and started to spit acid all around in front of itself. Morty jumped back to avoid being sprayed. 

          His sudden movement inspired the monster, it seemed, and it closed its mouth and started sprinting towards him with its awkward sausage-wrapped body lunged forward.

          “Oh, geeze!!!” Morty turned and took off back the way he had come. He saw the puddle closing in quickly and looked to the right. The knife was sitting there, waiting for him patiently. He pushed his muscles and darted for the object. He could hear the monster’s naked feet slapping against the floor as it rushed forward. He almost had the knife, was bent at the hip with his arm stretched out for the grab, when the creature slammed into his side full force.

          Morty screamed and hit the ground hard. Adrenaline turned him over and made him look at his attacker face on. Whatever the nightmare was, it stood back up, straight and tall, and Morty saw its mouth starting to open again. 

          “Go away!” He cried, though he knew it was pointless. His gaze darted to the left and he saw the knife by his ankle. He rolled himself up onto his hands and the balls of his feet and grabbed the one weapon in sight.

_           GraaawwweeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEGHK _ !

          “Aggh!” The task took too long to complete. The Gargler had tossed its head back, opened its leachy mouth wide, and started spewing that acid out into the air. Drops of the stuff came down all around and Morty could feel he had been hit in various places all over his body. 

          Two spots on his scalp started to burn. Panic made him drop his weapon, stand, and run. Fear made him ignore the burning on his shoulders, back, and arm and start pawing his head with the sleeve of his jacket. 

          He ran, shaking and sure he would feel his brain starting to melt any second now. However, putting as much distance between that spitting heathen and himself was still his legs’ prime objective.

          Morty made it back to where the metal walls became chain linked fence before he paused for breath. He looked back over his shoulder. Nothing there. He looked at his jacket sleeve he had been using to wipe off his scalp.

          “Oh, god!” His ears began to ring and he thought he might pass out. The sleeve was covered in blood and the acidic saliva. He watched it eat through the thick fabric like it was toilet paper and then let out a high-pitched scream. “Fuck!” 

          Morty started taking off his jacket. He struggled and the shifting fabric hurt his newly formed wounds, but he had to get out of the tarnished clothing. When he tossed the jacket to the ground he saw several vicious little holes, each soaked in blood, along the garment. 

          The frightened man reached back over his shoulder and felt around. His fingers hit a wet, incredibly sensitive area of melted flesh and he howled in pain and pulled his fingers forward to look at them. He was bleeding, and badly. He had burned holes spread out along his shoulders and back. Everything hurt, but he must have been in shock because nothing felt unbearable. Just horrible.

_           Geaaaaaaeeeerghk! Eaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh! _

          Morty looked back and saw the damned thing had followed him. Of course it had! He needed to keep running. Forget Silent Hill. Forget the letter! If he stayed there he would die! He needed a hospital! He needed to run!

          Morty took off again, panting and stumbling as he sprinted through the short maze. He started to cry like no normal man ever admitted to. It was a wet but sobbless cry that streamed from wide, terrified eyed that feared the inevitable. He turned the last corner, missing his footing and tumbling harshly into the gate. His arms blocked his head from the brunt of the impact, but he still felt dizzy and exceptionally confused. When he looked up, he saw things through one eye and a curtain of red in front of the other. 

          A timid hand touched the top of his head where the pain was the worst and he felt a surprising dip and then something smooth and hard. Denile kept the truth from him even as he asked himself if he were fondling his own skull. The acid had burned away all of his hair and flesh in that spot and blood was draining from the wound freely. He couldn’t think about that though, because his life was still in danger. Plus, touching the spot didn’t seem to burn his fingertips, so part of him rapidly decided that the acid must have been neutralized or washed away by the blood.

          What really traumatized Morty was what laid ahead of him. 

          “A—W-where is it?” He stood on shaky legs and forced his weak knees to cooperate. He walked over to the end of the path and put his blood soaked hands up against the tarp. He pressed on the rubbery material and looked all around it for some sign of what was missing. “Where’s the way out?!”

          He was certain this was the place where he had come in. The entire walkway only had one direction to go. There were no splits in the road, no real ways to get turned around. The glory was supposed to have been that there was no way to end up the victim at the back of a dead end, because there was no dead end.

          Regardless, the path he had been eager to take, the one that lead back out onto CH 73, should have been were he was touching, but it was like no exit ever existed. There wasn’t even a place to suggest that a gate or doorway ever existed there in the first place. It was just another reasonably solid wall. 

          “This can’t be happening,” he spoke in a trembling voice. Then he became angry and desperate. Someone had to have started that car. Someone had to be outside! Had to have installed the new fencing and trapped him inside with that- that thing!

_           Grraaaaaaaeeeeeegk _ !

          Morty started shaking the fence and screaming at the top of his lungs. “Let me out! Somebody, let me out! Help! Help!” All pride was gone. He just wanted to live.

          Sadly, no matter how much he struggled, no one came for him. The fence wouldn’t give or budge, and the monster was coming closer. He could smell its rotten breath and knew its mouth was gaped open nearby. When Morty looked, he saw the foul beast twitching and walking in its awkward fashion around the corner at the end of the hall. 

          “Damn it,” he cursed. Then louder, “Damn it!”

          Morty tried kicking the fence’s base, trying to jar part of it loose so he could crawl under and out, but it didn’t give. Then he gave up and tried to jump up and climb the fence, but the tarp and his blood-soaked fingers shared no traction and he slid back down without a moment of success. 

          His heart pounded in his chest and between his ears. He felt cold sweat pouring out from his panic zones, but then wondered just how much of the moisture was sweat and how much was blood.

          Closer. Its bare feet slapping the pavement. One. Two. One. Two. The sloppy but unbroken pattern continued. Then it stopped and screeched again. The deep-throat gargling mixed with the shrill sound and Morty heard the disturbing pop as the monster started to spew acid again.

          Thankfully, the monster was still far enough away that the acid didn’t hit, but Morty knew when it finished throwing up it would be ready to dart at him again, and this time he wouldn’t be able to escape. 

          Morty looked at the Gargler and noticed it was technically off to one side. Not entirely, but enough that he might be able to rush past it. It wasn’t the best plan, but it seemed better than waiting for it to come to him.

          Morty waited until the spit up stopped and the mouth began to close. He prayed this thing was on the timer he assumed for it. 

          On top of everything, it was starting to get darker and Morty wasn’t sure if he could fanagle his escape if the sun took what little diffused light he had along with it.

          “Fuuuuuuck!” Morty wailed and dashed forward, head down and face turned away from the creature. He tried to avoid any puddles of the acid drool but it was almost impossible so close to the source. Regardless, he ran. He felt triumphant when he managed to pull past the thing and break around the corner, but his moment of optimism faded as he slammed headfirst into a wall that shouldn’t have been there.

          “Ooghff!” Morty fell back on his ass hard enough that his lungs lost all their air. His hand fell into something warm and wet. For an instant, Morty thought it was a puddle of his own blood, but then his skin began to burn with a searing pain he hadn’t realized he could process. 

          Morty screamed at the top of his lungs until his voice cracked and gave out. He took in sudden deep breaths in rapid gulps and let out a broken series of screams that came and went like the process of hyperventilation. He held his wounded hand by the wrist with his other and watched in horror as the skin bubbled a mix of bright and dark reds and peeled back layer by layer as the acid did its job. He watched as the tendons snapped apart and dissolved and his bone was left exposed to the open air, covered in thick, creamy human putty that too was being burned away. 

          Morty lost it finally and vomited roughly all over the ground. His stomach lurched over and over, emptying all it had. The shock was real and worse now. He could only hear a loud ringing and there were white rings around his vision, and colorful green dots blocking out some of the landscape. The world spun around and before he realized it, he collapsed. 

          The blackout lasted only a second and left him weak and sore everywhere. Everything hurt, some places worse than others, but he couldn’t clearly think about any one pang or thing independently. His eyes fluttered open and closed as he tried to register what was happening to him. The loud ringing and numbness started to wear off, enough at least that Morty realized he was still alive and still had a chance to escape.

          Along the line of fence in front of him, it appeared that the spray of acid had melted a hole through the wall. Morty’s lip twitched up in a horrible mesh of a grimace and a crazed smile. He could make it, he told himself. He could fit through the hole and flee this nightmare. It wasn’t a yard away and he’d be free to seek shelter or help or whatever he wanted because he’d be alive and away from that monster.

          However, that was easier said than done. When Morty tried to get up the first time, his muscles refused to respond. Then renewed motivation struck as he heard the creature approaching. He found enough strength to roll onto his elbows, but the damage to his hands and shoulders took him by surprise. As soon as he sat up he was back down again, paralyzed by the pain of his wounds.

_           It’s coming _ ! his mind warned.  _ You’re dead if you don’t go now! _

          Morty gritted his teeth and miraculously managed to pull himself onto his knees again. Using his wounded hand’s elbow and his still functioning hand, he crawled as far and as fast as he could. His knees began to sting and he feared the worst while simultaneously repeating to himself over and over _ , Don’t think about it! _

          His head popped out on the other side. There was a lot of fog but no monsters as far as the eye could see in any direction. He kept crawling and wiggled his upper half to freedom despite the pain. For that instant, his heart raced with hope rather than dread. Just a few more pushes and-

          “Aaaaaaggh!!!”

          Back beyond the fence, something had happened. Morty had no idea if it was the saliva or the thing’s rows of dagger teeth, but he felt a tremendous pain shoot through his left calf. Morty’s eyes rolled into the back of his head and he shook dangerously, thrashing and kicking and convulsing from the agony. Then it bit down and he knew. The monster was eating him. Eating his leg!

          He could feel it chomp around the meat of his leg and its rows of horrid teeth pierced in uneven circular rows. Even worse than the teeth or the acid which started to wear away at his human flesh was the monster’s hot breath. It rolled over and into the melting, tearing meat and stung like hellfire. Or maybe that was the acid? It didn’t matter enough to tell. 

          Morty clawed the ground with both hands, with the one in shreds useless without the system of tendons and muscle to control the disintegrating joints or bones. He tried desperately to pull himself forward, even determined to lose the leg and find a safer life without it, but he had no strength to budge. He couldn’t escape the growling, gurgling beast that dined on his appendage. He couldn’t quite give up, but he couldn’t fight either. 

          Then the choice wasn’t his anymore. His head fell limp against the pavement on the safe side of the fence and he found it impossible to lift it again. His eyes were wide open, staring down the road, he now felt he finally understood why it was blocked off. He could still hear and smell and feel the thing devouring him, but he started not to care. He just wanted it to stop. He wanted the pain to go away. He thought a nap sounded nice, but he couldn’t even close his eyes to drift to sleep peacefully. Then he felt the tightness in his chest that warned him to breathe. He hadn’t realized he had been holding his breath and tried to let it out, but it was already gone. Drawing in a fresh breath was an impossible request too, it seemed. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t make himself breathe any more than he could close his own eyes. 

_           I guess _ , he thought absently.  _ This is what death is like.  _ An image of his grandfather washed over him like he was suddenly dreaming. The road had vanished. He reached out to touch Rick’s face but even in the dream he couldn’t move.  _ I’m sorry, Rick. I guess I won’t be coming to see you after all. _

          Maybe he was supposed to believe dying would release his soul to wherever Rick’s was, but Morty felt the distinct impression that when he slipped away, he’d be no closer to his grandfather than he was in that moment.

          He slipped into darkness and quiet and knew he was right. It was game over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wheew! So, I know that was a little torture porn-esk at the end there, but I really wanted to detail out at least one death by the "hands" of my Gurgler creatures. They're an original monster created with various kinds of spitters and leach faced things form other games/the movies. I hope you found them nice and horrifying. <3 
> 
> I won't have the next chapter up for a little while since I have other things to work on, but I'll still try to get one up in the next 7-11 days. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed it.   
> See you again soon.


	5. No Saved File Found

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morty has to start back at square one, but this time new information is revealed to the reader.

A high-pitched piercing noise started in the back of Morty’s subconscious. From there it grew louder and louder until it was so deafening that it made his bones ache.

          “Agh!” Morty screamed and shot up. His hands smacked the steering wheel and his elbow smashed into the driver's side window, causing him to hiss and retract the arm immediately. He cradled the wounded limb with the other and moaned whimpishly. “Owwwweww. Damn it.”

          His heart was still pounding, but he couldn’t remember what about his dream had been so terrifying. He sat there in the driver’s seat for a long while, trying to calm himself down. 

          He reminded himself that he had been driving to Silent Hill to visit the Lakeview Hotel. He pulled out the letter he had found on his dresser yesterday morning and told himself that even though it was crazy, he had to see for himself if Rick Sanchez was really there, waiting for him like the note suggested.

          “Too bad the road was out,” he said with a methodical sigh.

          Morty took care of his belongings, locked his car up tight, and started off down the path that started along the cliff hanging over a section of Toluca Lake and ended at the eastern gateway to Toluca Cemetery.

          On the way, Morty had been certain he heard footsteps in the brush surrounding his path, and even though he couldn’t see anything, he ran like hell from the angry canines he most definitely heard.

          “Oh, geeze,” he groaned. “What the hell?” 

          Morty felt like someone was mocking him or playing a game with him, because as soon as he was on the other side of the gate the beastial voices stopped. 

          Regardless, he had a ways to go before he would even reach South Silent Hill’s boarder, so he decided to get moving again.

          The graveyard was eerily quiet, save for the soft rustle of dry autumn leaves and the moaning of the wind between the monuments placed every few feet in semi-neat rows. 

_           This place is huge _ , Morty found himself thinking.  _ There must be generations of the same family all buried here. Maybe dating more than 100, or even 200 years back. _

          It was impressive to think that one place could accumulate so much family, so many lives dependent on the others. He thought sadly back to his own broken family and wished that he hadn’t. His mother had broken apart after her father’s passing, and his grandmother on that side of his family had died when he was still a baby. His sister had gone off to community college and his father was probably wasting away in some old motel somewhere in the Midwest. There was no “home town burial” waiting for any of them. His family didn’t have that kind of roots.

          Morty kind of liked the idea of growing roots into the floor of a place that really felt like a home. He wanted that for himself someday. Maybe with Jessica, a girl he had been fighting off a hard crush for since elementary school. Maybe with someone else. But he wanted a home, somewhere he could say he’d be happy to call  _ his _ .

          “No. No. No!” An unfamiliar voice broke Morty’s concentration. He jumped at the sound and turned towards the mausoleum, where he was fairly certain the sound had originated. Morty waited and then heard the male stranger yell, “Not again!”

          Whoever he was, the guy didn’t sound too terribly large or much older than Morty. He could hear the boy sobbing and decided it was probably fairly harmless to see if he was in any serious need of help. 

          “Hello?” Morty called to the young man, his voice a touch more timid than he had meant for it to sound. 

          A handsome boy, no older than a year or two more than Morty, shot up from the crypt steps and turned on Morty. 

          “You!” he gasped. Morty froze in place despite a voice in the back of his head begging him to kick up some dirt and flee. The other male must have seen some of the concern on Morty’s face, because he pulled back and tried to look less intimidating. “Whow, Okay. Don’t look at me like that, okay? I promise, I’m not crazy.”

          At that moment, Morty’s peripherals picked up the glint of something shiny. He glanced down and saw that the boy was holding a large kitchen knife in his right hand. 

          The boy caught that too. He quickly glanced at the knife and then raised his hands, including the one with the knife, up in front of himself in a defensive manner. His free hand splayed open and his last two fingers pulled off the knife’s handle to show that his grasp was weak. 

          “This is just for self defense!” he explained in a hurried manner. “Look, I know this  _ sounds  _ crazy, but we’ve met. You’re Morty, right?”

          Morty took a step back. Suddenly, he thought maybe the letter he had thought was from Rick might have been some sort of trap. He swallowed thickly. He had no idea if he should own up to it or not, if he should put any faith in this stranger who somehow knew his name. 

          “My name is Dipper. I told you that at least once already. Do you remember that?”

          “I-I’m sorry,” Morty said, his nervous stutter coming out too strong. “I-I-I don’t-uh-I don’t think I know you.” Again his gaze ventured down to the very sharp and sturdy looking blade. 

          Dipper seemed to realize how threatening the knife was, and despite his spastic behavior, he appeared to want to gain Morty’s trust for one reason or another. He waved the knife loosely to draw Morty’s attention to it. “Here. See?” He tossed the knife onto the mist-moistened grass a fair distance from himself, closer to Morty. “No problem. Okay? I don’t wanna hurt you.”

          Morty felt a pulsing in the back of his skull that warned of an oncoming stress headache. He had those sometimes, though the doctor he saw about them two years ago said they were normal and nothing to worry about. She had told Morty he just needed to learn how to relax more. 

          He heard the doctor tell him this, remind him of it again, in his mind and he thought bitterly,  _ I’d like her to stay calm in-in a situation like this. _

          “What  _ do _ you want?” Morty asked cautiously. 

          “To talk,” Dipper said. “Just to talk.”

          Morty felt trapped. He didn’t want to talk to some crazy kid, but he also wasn’t so sure the boy was as unstable as he first thought. He had noted the effort for trust and Morty was already trying to justify the odd behavior. 

          Maybe he  _ had _ met Dipper somewhere before and he just didn’t remember. Maybe they had gone to elementary school together or something. Maybe he really did have the knife for self defense reasons. Maybe. 

          “Okay,” Morty offered hesitantly. “So-so talk.”

          “You were lured to Silent Hill too, weren’t you? With something…” Dipper rubbed his left arm with his right hand in a worried manner. “Something important to you, right?”

          “H-how did you–?”

          “I knew it! You’re like me!” That dangerous excitement returned to Dipper’s expression. He took a step towards Morty, gesturing with his hands in animated ways that made Morty a touch more uncomfortable again. “Look, I need to find my sister! Mabel. Do you remember me telling you about her?” 

          It must have been clear that Morty was feeling overwhelmed again and had no idea what Dipper was talking about by his face or something else, because the strange young man’s brows suddenly furrowed in distress. 

          “Ugh.” The man in the baseball cap groaned irritably. He took a step back and ran one of his hands through his hair as the other held onto the white and blue cap. 

          Morty noticed there was a blue pine tree decorating the center decal area above the hood. It was an arbitrary thing, but it drew an odd amount of focus. 

          “Look, the town-“ Dipper replaced his cap and tried to speak calmly while giving off as little crazy as he could manage. Morty could see the effort, and he wanted to believe this guy was just stressed out. “This  _ town _ took her. I know how it sounds, but the whole place is cursed or something. I-I don’t know  _ how _ it knew to take her, or  _ how _ …” Dipper started walking in a small line. As he paced, he sounded like he was trying to sort things out on the fly. “I just know that this place has some kind of power.  _ Evil _ power.”

          Morty’s heart sank. So this guy  _ was _ crazy after all. That was somehow very disappointing. Morty didn’t have a lot of friends around his own age–or many at all, truth be told–so perhaps he had just wanted to bond with someone who could maybe share in his odd journey.

          He hadn’t made it two steps back before eyes filled with manic desperation locked back on him. Morty’s legs tensed, ready to sprint, when Dipper turned back to face him. He started moving forward, saying something about how Morty had to understand what he was saying. Morty couldn’t focus anymore because there was too much blood pulsing between his ears. 

          “Look,” Morty said. He raised his hands to try and appear harmless, but also in response to the other male’s decent. “I-I don’t want any trouble, man.”

          “Trouble?! Trouble?!” Dipper’s voice had risen to a yell. It did nothing to help his image. Then, suddenly, he lunged forward and grabbed Morty by the collar of his jacket. “Listen to me! If you don’t wise up this town will eat you alive! We have to work together! I can’t beat this place by myself!” He shook his head, a distant look suddenly crossing his features. He was horrified. When he spoke next, his voice was almost quivering. “I-I can’t do this alone. I keep trying, but-“ 

          His hands fell off of Morty’s coat and the slightly taller male used that moment to pull away and dash back four large steps. He was surprised to see that Dipper didn’t pursue him.

          “Oh, god.” Morty watched Dipper fall to his knees. He was staring at his hands. “How long have I been here?” Then he looked up at Morty. Now he squinted as though he wasn’t entirely sure what he was looking at. “Who-?” Dipper’s eyes widened. He was pale and starting to sweat, and he looked like he might really be able to kill someone as he screamed, “No!” He jumped back to his feet and pointed at Morty. “I’m not doing this again! You hear me?! I’m going to find her!”

          “S-sure, man. You’re gonna find her. I believe you.” Morty felt foolish, but he didn’t know what else to say and he also felt like he might want to try for that knife before Dipper got any ideas. 

          Thankfully, Dipper’s attention switched to something in the distance. “Mabel?”

          Morty chanced a glance over in the direction the other was looking. He saw a large house. Maybe he could call it a mansion? He wasn’t sure, but it was bigger than any house he thought he could comfortably live in. 

          There, standing by what might have been a back door–maybe side door?–was a bright pink smudge that Morty thought might be a girl by what appeared to be the dress and long brown hair. Everything was so hard to see at this distance, especially through the light fog.

          “Mabel!” Dipper called out to the girl Morty guesses was his sister. “Mabel, please! Stop running! I’m here to save you!”

          Morty thought for a moment that Dipper was a mad man chasing and trying to kill the girl who may or may not have been his sister. Being a decent person, Morty thought to step in and try to help her, but then his blood chilled as he heard the girl giggle like she was a wicked Alice in a nightmarish Wonderland. He turned in time to see her skip to the door, throw it open, and disappear inside. It was something right out of a horror movie, and it left Morty unable to respond for a moment. 

          He went to turn toward Dipper for an explanation or anything to feel less like he was in a bizarre dream, but Dipper was already charging towards the building at top speeds. 

          “Mabel! Mabel, wait! Please! Don’t leave me here! Why are you running from me?!”

 

          Just like that, Morty was alone in the graveyard again. His heart was still pounding in his chest, even after Dipper had vanished into the building after his equally unstable sister. Morty couldn’t seem to get right about what had just happened. It had been such an awkward and surreal event.

          “I should tell someone about them,” he decided aloud. “When I get into town, I’ll report them to the police or something. Maybe someone’s looking for them.”

          He didn’t want to think ill of anyone, but he felt there was a distinct possibility that those two may have escaped some sort of special home, the kind where trained nurses tended to the tenant's individual needs with the aid of prescriptions and quiet times.

          “Yeah….” The idea of reporting the situation made him feel calm enough that he was able to move on from it. He needed to get going though, because night was only a few hours away and he had a long walk to the South side of town yet.

          Morty eventually made it to the Southwest gate that led out onto the Country Highway 73. The gate shut behind him with a loud creek and Morty stretched his arms out as he looked ahead. 

          “Looks like the fog is getting heavier.” Morty sighed and looked from side to side. His mind wandered back to the siblings one last time before he took a deep breath and decided the fastest way to do anything was to get moving. When he was completely confident, Morty started off to his right, down the road he hoped would lead to some peace of mind and answers. His old goal was reset into focus. He needed to make it to the Lakeview Hotel as soon as possible. He wanted to see what the letter that drew him there was about and then he wanted to go home. 

          As he walked down the paved road, he had a bit of an abstract thought he said out loud to take its power. “This place is a lot spookier than I remember.”

**Author's Note:**

> If you like what you read, please be sure to bookmark, heart, and comment to let me know I have readers to keep up on this for. It really is a magnificent motivator! 
> 
> Thank you for reading! Have a great day.


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